VSH survivor queens are queens that are bred from colonies that have had no mite treatments of any kind. Every queen that Wildflower Meadows sells has been bred directly from VSH survivor stock. Not only is the breeder colony survivor stock, but both the queen mothers and the drones that are part of the insemination process have also been derived from survivor stock.
By naturally selecting colonies that can survive on their own without beekeeper intervention, Wildflower Meadows’ stock becomes hardier with each new generation that passes. (This is the law of “survival of the fittest.”) That means that with a Wildflower Meadows’ VSH-Italian queen, your colony has the best chance of survival when faced with adverse conditions.
Wildflower Meadows has raised survivor queens from treatment-free survivor stock for over fifteen years, and is committed to treatment free beekeeping. It has never made sense to us to breed queens from colonies that require any sort of mite treatments to survive. It has also made equally little sense to give breeder colonies (or potential breeder colonies) any sort of “preventative” or even “soft” chemical mite treatment. If a breeder colony or potential breeder colony has been treated for varroa or tracheal mites in any way, how would anyone know whether the strain of bees has any natural ability to control mites? The only way to determine whether a colony is truly mite resistant, is to see how the bees handle mites on their own, over the course of time, and without assistance from the beekeeper. This is true survivor stock – Mother Nature’s survival of the fittest.
As they say, only the strong survive, and it is only the strongest from which we breed.
